After 50 years, police arrest Nevada man in cold case murder of Waikiki teen

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - After 50 years, there’s been a huge break in a Waikiki murder investigation.

In January 1972, 19-year-old Nancy Anderson was found fatally stabbed in her Aloha Drive apartment.

And on Tuesday, after complex forensic analysis, authorities booked a suspect in Reno.

He’s been identified as Tudor Chirila, a former attorney.

Multiple detectives worked on the case over the years, but started gaining traction in December 2021. That’s when they got a tip about Chirila, who lived in Hawaii in the 1970s and was a UH grad assistant.

Previous Coverage: 47 years after Waikiki woman’s murder, HPD re-examines cold case files

DNA testing eventually linked him to a blood stained towel recovered from Anderson’s apartment.

Her family, including her nine siblings, have spent years searching for any sense of closure.

“She was an integral part of our family and when she was killed it just left a hole in our hearts and in our family,” said Jack Anderson, Nancy’s brother.

Court documents say Chirila attempted to kill himself last week, two days after police collected a sample.

But he is expected to survive.

Reno authorities say he’ll be in court sometime this week and HPD is working to bring him back to Hawaii.

HPD previously said it had sought the services of a DNA technology case to assist in the case.

Parabon Nanolabs told HNN that genetic genealogy was used in analyzing the evidence along with DNA phenotyping, a process of predicting physical appearance and ancestry from unidentified DNA evidence.

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